DRAFT

GLOBALISATION AND

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN

Patrick Kendall

Research Economist

Social and Economic Research Unit

Caribbean Development Bank

October 2007

Abstract

Given the importance of human resource development in defining the competitiveness of

economies in the globalisation era, the paper evaluates the performance of the Caribbean in the

education sector vis--vis several comparator countries the Newly Industrialised Economies of

East Asia (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea); the New Tigers (Thailand, Malaysia,

Philippines, Indonesia) and a group of developed countries (US, UK, Japan). The paper also

reviews the performance of the Caribbean with respect to manufacturing exports and particularly

high technology manufacturing exports and ICTs. In both the education sector indicators, the

manufacturing and the ICT indicators, there is generally a significant gap between the Caribbean

and the comparator countries. The paper then looks at specific issues related to the previous

discussion. These include the need for skills enhancement of the labour force; the need for a

regional technological development strategy; the role of ICTs in human resource development

and the strategies for human resource development in the high performing Asian countries.

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INTRODUCTION

Education has become a standard inclusion in empirical models explaining growth performance (Kormendi and Meguire, 1985; Landau, 1986; Barro (1991); Easterly and Rebelo, 1993) and has

generally been found to have a significant impact. In analyses of the outstanding economic achievements

of the East Asian Newly Industrialised Economies (NIEs), education receives a prominent place. The

theoretical and empirical literature, of course, goes beyond the growth impact to include certain

externalities such as a more stable society, improved family health, associated particularly with the

education of women, reduced fertility of women because of the increased opportunity costs of child

bearing and hence less population pressure etc. Accordingly, in the growth and the development

literature, the question no longer is whether to educate or not but how many to educate, in what areas,

within what time and at what cost?

Given the foregoing and the recent economic performance of the Caribbean, the time is opportune

for an evaluation of the education sector in an attempt to answer the above questions. The study begins

with a review of the performance of the sector vis--vis other developing and developed countries, given

the consensus that education is, in the knowledge-based economy of today, a major determinant of

competitiveness. The second part of the study reviews the issue of the skills upgrading of the labour force

and the redefinition of core skills, an issue which other countries such as, for example, Australia and

Singapore, are currently addressing. The third section of the paper looks at the important issue of

technological development and the contribution of education. The fourth section analyses the important

role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education. The fifth section explores the

funding and other related issues with regard to the new thrust in education while the sixth section

concludes.

A. The Performance of Caribbean Education vis--vis Other Countries

The critical question is: Where is the Caribbean in relation to other countries as regards the

performance of the education sector? To a significant degree, the answer determines the growth and

development performance of the Region vis--vis other countries. The analysis in this section compares

the performance of Caribbean education with that of the East Asian NIEs (Hong Kong, the Republic of

Korea, Singapore, Taiwan); the new Asian tigers or emerging East Asian NIEs (Malaysia, Thailand,

Indonesia, the Philippines), Japan, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US).

The Caribbean countries chosen for this analysis are Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados,

Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the

Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

The approach in this section is to review the performance of the Caribbean vis--vis the

comparator countries using several indicators for the education sector. These are:

(i) the ratio of total public sector expenditure on education to GDP;

(ii) total public sector expenditure on education as a proportion of total government expenditure;

(iii) the percentage expenditure of per capita income at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels;

(iv) the average gross enrolment at the secondary and tertiary levels;

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